So, I’m feeling a bit drained in the office earlier today and drift on to the internets to zone out a little. Don’t take this diary too seriously, but some of you guys and gals can be quite funny and I know you would love to take a shot at this one.
I believe it was via the Guardian that I came across the link below, and I could not resist reading this story about a couple of my crazy compatriots.
Back during the oil-crisis of the early 70’s, I recall the “Shower with a friend” motto as a means to preserve energy (and even as a means to achieve something else), but these folks are taking it to a totally different level:
Eco-porn: Great Sex For A Good Cause
Tommy and Leona are having sex on a tree stump in the middle of a Norwegian clear-cut. Leona, with a mop of brown dreads and a lip ring, looks dreamily across the demolished forest as Tommy, a little shaggy in nothing but a knit hat, works his magic.
A few minutes earlier, Leona and Tommy stood at the same spot lecturing about the evils of industrial forestry.
I recall these two making a little scandal while I was on vacation back home last summer. They had sex on stage during some band’s performance at a (fairly large) rock festival. My reaction was basically ‘so what’, but even secular Norway has its fair share of religious fundamentalists – mostly located at the southern and western coasts in rural areas. And this festival was on the south coast and …
Anyway, I know the above is totally tabloid, but there is a serious angle to this. If you read the story, you’ll note that these two amateurs (in several ways, I guess) have raised almost $100,000.
It’s a novel approach to eco-activism, certainly, but one the duo hopes will help save the planet. Indeed, in its first year of operation, this unlikely project has raised nearly $100,000 for rain forest protection through the sale of paid memberships.
I don’t think they are charlatans either, this is their profile:
“Everyone must try to create something good using what they have,” Tommy told me by phone from the apartment the couple shares in Berlin. “We had nothing, just our bodies.” With backgrounds in progressive and green theater and teaching troubled teens, Leona Johansson, 21, and Tommy Hol Ellingsen, 28, wanted to do more than just protest the state of the world — they wanted to make a difference. To them, eco-porn is the obvious choice. “Porn makes really, really a lot of money,” Tommy continues in his soft Norwegian accent, “so why not use that money for good?”
Because of their rather ‘unorthodox’ ways of fundraising, they have met with some resistance:
“WWF (formerly known as World Wildlife Fund) Norway didn’t want to speak with us — they pushed us out of the office,” says Tommy. “We wrote to WWF in the Netherlands; they said they couldn’t take our money, either. After the court case, suddenly, nobody wanted to talk to us at all.”
They have now decided to work directly with indigenous communities in Costa Rica and Brazil. I know a bit about implementing development or humanitarian projects. They are in for quite a challenge. But I cannot help rooting for them and wish them good luck.
Finally, as a public service, I’ll post a link to their site, since it was not actually provided in the article.
It’s not totally work safe for those with such issues, but a lot tamer and certainly more attractive than JJGG’s pics.
